1. Field
The described embodiments relate to techniques for tracking the virality of an individual's actions in a social graph. More specifically, the described embodiments relate to techniques for tracking the impact of an individual's actions on other individuals in a social graph associated with a website.
2. Related Art
Websites often determine a wide variety of user-action metrics to assess the interest of users in their content. For example, many websites determine: the number of users per day, the number of paid views, the number of clicks on advertising, etc.
While these user-action metrics provide information about user interest in the content, a significant portion of the user's interest is often missed by the user-action metrics. In particular, when a given user performs an action related to a website, there are often multiple subsequent actions that occur. Many of these actions are often performed by other individuals than the given user. Because these subsequent actions (which are sometimes referred to as ‘downstream actions’) are not tracked by existing user-action metrics, the interest of users in the content on websites is typically underestimated. These underestimates can: adversely affect decisions made based on the inaccurate estimates of user interest; result in incorrect assessments of the effective audience of the websites; and reduce the value of paid advertising on the websites.
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